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Note to all the postgres users cursing EBS right now: you can persist your db instances to s3 with https://github.com/heroku/WAL-E, which, combined with streaming replication and some redundancy, should let you run off ephemeral disk.


I recommend this as well. Performance is way more consistent on the instance/ephemeral storage as well.


Reminder: Salesforce owns Heroku


They do say, though, that the job is to "Design and implement major pieces of the salesforce.com core database infrastructure". That doesn't sound like they're talking about Heroku, at least not as the main reason for their hiring spree.


All of Salesforce production uses Oracle.. It costs them some serious $$$. Oracle is one of Salesforces competitors.


Be that as it may a Salesforce.com representative told me that the hiring is related to the Heroku Postgres service, not a migration from Oracle to Postgres [1].

Perhaps the person writing the job ad was embellishing by calling it a major piece of the core database infrastructure.

[1] http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/salesforce-orac...


Or Salesforce is moving to dogfood heroku internally.


This is the first thing I thought when I read it.


Cheaper does not mean lower quality. [Insert snide comment about 24 or Downton Abbey here]


Maybe not I'm every instance, but I think it's easy to assume that lower overall budgets lead to lower overall quality.


Production quality and artistic quality are not the same things.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a low budget film, for example. It's budget was about 9% of the budget of Waterworld.


Technology has greatly reduced the cost of filming. If you look on YouTube, you'll see that tiny budgets allow for production values well above typical network television even ten years ago. TV and movies may die by the sword of technological changes, but they also get to live by it.


Lower overall budgets lead to less spectacle. Personally I'm not that interested in spectacle.


Seeing the brick wall in front of your face is not looking the other way. However, there is only a brick wall if you want to raise money, want an exit, or care if you get sued. I'm actually not being sarcastic here; there's something to be said for building a law firm in the shape of a music startup.


"And you should believe me because I have definitely not made my career by convincing people to stop using desktop software."


Is Hacker News running on your desktop now?


"never click on links" is impossible advice to follow. Security people often forget that there is a tradeoff between security and functionality. You need to do cost/benefit analysis to decide whether to use a particular feature.


Never click on links until you are on the destination site is the advice I give to friends/family who aren't computer sophisticated. (Up there with Never Open attachments in your email and never install new programs on your computer)

Those two practices, typing in "www.wellsfargo.com" instead of clicking on a link that suggests it will be taking you there, and never, ever, opening any attachment, cuts down on 95% of the malware attacks that these people experience.

Most non-computer users aren't sophisticated enough to understand what links they can, and cannot click on, so they are safer just typing out URLs and navigating from there. It's great advice for those people. Bookmarks make the practice a little more efficient as well.

As much as we computer sophisticates despise the "Walled-Garden" aspects of the Apple Store (and soon, the Microsoft Store) - those should also significantly reduce the amount of malware people end up installing when they add new programs. It may not eliminate it (as we saw when Path uploaded people's Address Book information onto their servers without asking the user permission) - but, between application review + client-side checks on privacy - malware infestations have experienced a radical drop on stock iOS devices vs what a user's computing experience used to be in the Bad Old days of Windows 95/XP in which even _I_ got nailed by a trojan or two.


I think it is also important to remember that iOS (and similar devices) have a much stronger security model from a technical standpoint (low-level, near complete sandboxing with white-listed permisions). As apposed to most desktop computers where almost every program runs with full user permisions, and in the case of windows 95 (and maybe also XP), that normal user tended to be an administrator.

I don't really think most computer sophisticates have a problem with a walled garden, but rather a problem with a locked down garden. In linux, for example, the standard means of installing software is through a central repository maintained by whoever maintains the OS, and all of the software in that repository is reviewed before being added. The difference is that if the user wants to, they can install software not offered through the repository, and/or add 3rd party repositories.


Unless you're saddled with selinux, in which case, maybe not.


Sites that involve credit cards or banking are in a whole different category. For those I think the best advice is to only use https bookmarks.

In that vein, here's an idea for a browser feature. When someone enters something into a form that looks like a credit card number, bank account number, or bank routing number, black out the entire browser (including the url bar) and require them to type in the domain they think they're submitting to. If they get it wrong they can't submit the form (at least for a few minutes).


Yes, let's cripple online shopping.


Only for sites that you don't already have an account on, and which don't use a paypal-like service. Although since there are consumer protections on credit cards, it might make sense just to warn on bank account and routing numbers.


Only for sites that you don't already have an account on, and which don't use a paypal-like service.

How is a browser supposed to detect either?


It doesn't have to. In both of those cases you're not entering your credit card number.


Cookies to indicate previously visited sites.


Couldn't phishers just start having their fake forms send the current form content via ajax every time a new character is typed, rather than only on submit?


If I was a phisher, or similar ilk, I'd be doing this already.


1. Always use jslint.

2. Read good JavaScript (as others have said). The jquery source is a good place to start. Underscore.js is good, too. Unfortunately there isn't consensus about what is and what isn't good JavaScript. Some people seem to be suggesting Prototype as an example of good js, which I would disagree with.


> 1. Always use jslint.

Or jshint!


You can even write your own foreign data wrappers in python: http://multicorn.org/implementing-an-fdw/#id3 Their "Hello, world" example is less than 15 lines of code.


Why does everyone claim that price discrimination is some kind of injustice when it's done by a computer?


It has little to do with the price being set by a computer or a person. He sees the price for everyone else is one third cheaper. He doesn't say it, but without making the connection to the price fixing anti-trust action, a reasonable conclusion would be that since the book is one in a series, and Amazon knows he bought the previous book, it has jacked the price for him since he's already "hooked." That to most people would be a questionable pricing strategy.

The anti trust action makes more sense, but he probably didn't make that connection.


Price fixing requires multiple sellers to collude to set prices. Who is the seller besides Amazon in this case?


yes...let's all go protest at the cineplex because gosh-darn-it my friend who went to the matinee was charged less than me! unfair!

don't like the price? don't buy it.


Because it's been programmed by a person.


If you go to a flea market, and the lady at the stall gives the person after you a 20% lower price because you looked rich (inelastic) and they looked poor (elastic), would you be angry about that?

Amazon is doing the same thing but with numbers.


You already have the abstractions, they're just C abstractions.


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